Study touts upside of private lease for Pennsylvania Turnpike

April 10, 2008

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania should make wholesale changes to its request for federal approval to add tolls to Interstate 80 and pursue a private lease for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, according to a study released Thursday.

The Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles, said toll income should be designated to modernize the interstate and add truck-only lanes to let longer and heavier tractor-trailers use the roadway.

It critiqued a House Democratic study issued last month that had identified problems with leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike, saying the Democratic study failed to account for ways a private company could operate the roadway more efficiently.

It described the turnpike as one of the nation’s least efficient toll road operations.

“You could make a lot of money, which is why the private sector would bid a large amount upfront, because there’s large opportunities for cost-cutting,” said Robert W. Poole Jr., a co-author of the study.

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The Pennsylvania Turnpike’s overhead percentage ranked third-highest among the 35 U.S. and foreign toll organizations they studied, but the turnpike said the study used incorrect expense numbers.

Last month the House Democratic Caucus released “For Whom the Road Tolls: Corporate Asset or Public Good,” which argued that a turnpike lease would be a less cost-effective way to raise transportation money than I-80 tolls.

A state law passed last summer authorized as many as 10 toll collection sites on I-80 as part of a plan to raise billions of dollars for roads, bridges and mass transit. But the prospect of new tolls has generated significant political opposition, particularly among people and businesses along the interstate corridor.

The Reason Foundation’s proposal for a truck-only lane would be expensive to build and enforce, said Bob Caton, spokesman for House Majority Leader Keith McCall, D-Carbon.

“These guys reached a conclusion, then tried to find data to support their conclusion that letting a private company run everything in the world is the right way to go,” Caton said.

Sometime in the next several weeks, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell will ask companies to submit bids on a long-term turnpike lease, and he plans to submit the best offer to the Legislature as a possible alternative to tolling Interstate 80.

The Reason Foundation study “certainly supports the case we’ve made, and we are glad that there is another side of the story to be included in the debate,” said Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo.

Critics of a turnpike lease have raised questions about potential foreign control of what is a significant state asset. They also have questioned the fairness of saddling turnpike motorists — who already pay tolls — with potentially higher fees to subsidize highway and mass transit needs across the state.